Part shipping products consisting of other products!

[geoffm]

Sorry for perhaps not a very clear title but hopefully, here goes with a clearer description!

We sell inkjet and toner cartridges via an Actinic site both individually (1x black 1x cyan 1x magenta 1x yellow) and as sets (1 of each consitutes a set).

I build a 'Set Product' consisting of 1 each of the individual cartridges (components) and we only have stock of 3 of the 4 components, there appears to be no way to part ship those 3 and send the 4th one afterwards.

I have only run this in test mode so far so I am unable to point you towards an example.

Does anyone know of a way please?

Cheers

Geoffm

[leehack]

I can't see how you can part ship what is classed as one whole product. Imagine actinic thinks that your propduct is a cake. It won't give you the facility to send half of that cake, that's unrealistic. To part ship, i'd suspect that you need to have the sale made as 4 products, you can use a discount to reduce the price once all 4 are bought, which will take you back in line with the cheaper price you offer i suspect.

[I-CC]

Shipping of components separate to the main product is a valid need, i.e. you create a package as you say, and it happens you have an item out of stock from the package, so instead of keeping the customer waiting on the one item, send what you have and back order the missing item - I know the need very well.

An explosion of the product line is needed and an ability to enable the shipping of components separately from the main 'assembly' product.

This is something which is not going to be added to v8 at this late stage of its life cycle, but think it may make an appearance soon (although Actinic may need to refute or confirm) in a major version release, but which title I am unsure of...

[Duncan Rounding]

I must be missing the point but I don't fully understand the need for this.
Shipping something which is only a part of the final item surely means that the collective item is unusable until all its parts are received. If that is not the case then why combine as components in the first place? Is this just to discount the total collective product perhaps? If so then it's a matter of setting up product groups and discounts rather.

If you part ship an item (ie a compnent only) what do you invoice then - the full amount or nothing?

[I-CC]

If the item being sold was a bike say and the components was frame, brakes, wheels, then agreed it would not be sensible to part ship LOL..

But, if the package is 'buy this packaged' set of 4 ink catridges, which is specially priced, and then it happens that one of them is out of stock (as they are separate items in this instance), then if deemed feasible from a working/shipping aspect, then sending 3 of them now and 1 in a weeks time, means 3 can be used now.

[Duncan Rounding]

Agreed - It would also tie your custoimer in to the sale and mean they cann't cancel very easily if your partly out if stock. Although I'm not sure what you would invoice for the part shipment.

Wouldn't it be the same as offering a discount break on 4 items or more?

[I-CC]

Wouldn't it be the same as offering a discount break on 4 items or more?

If it were a case that the 4 ink catridges were only needed in one product group to then discount.

Another example could be say a bumper stationery pack I want to sell consisting of:

1. Pens:
1a. Retractables - red, blue or black.
1b. non restractables with lids - red, blue or black.

2. ruler choices

and so on............

I might want to set my pens up in a product group and add a discount for qty puchasing or buy two get one free etc, but the product can only exist in the one product group, so I can not have the pens in my bumper package.

Using separate shipping abilities for the components, I can add products regardless of grouping into a single product to buy online, and ship them separately if needs be due to lack of stock.

For invoice elements, the items/components which are placed on back order then transfers the value of that item to the new B1 order, thus spliting out the invoice side of things. However, in this means of providing lots of items at a special price where they are shipped separately, then terms or caution would be needed if you shipped 2 of 4 items, and then the customer cancelled the remaining 2 and wants a refund for the remainder etc etc, so terms of price is for the entire package (as an offer) whilst items are separately priced blah blah blah...

[leehack]

This seems like a barmy discussion to me, how can a piece of software work out whether a product is in fact just one product or in fact a group of products. If you create a package of 4 items and one of those items is out of stock, then surely the package should be out of stock. If you want to sell the parts separately that's fine, but don't package something up into one product, run out and then need to cater for that.

If the package is £40 and shipping is £4, do you take £33, surely not? If you sell things that are out of stock, there will always be problems like this, it comes with the territory.

To avoid it create one product and have a component per sub-product with stock control enabled. Link the choices to the actual single items you have setup and have a simple yes or no in the drop down. That way people can buy a package when things are in stock, if not they can only buy what you can only send them and thus they only get charged for what you have and what you send them.

[I-CC]

Agreed that having the components connected back to the associated products and having those stock enabled, would in the majority of cases prevent the situation occuring, but if it does occur and you want to be able to keep the customer happy by part shipping, then this seems a viable means to achieving part shipment of products made up of components in this situation..

[leehack]

I think you can do this actually, well work around it at least. Create the product (the package), then add 4 non-optional components and associate them accordingly to the singular products. Customer never chooses whether to add them as they are included as standard. Set the package price on the product and use a product price only pricing model.

I'd expect that when bought customer sees they are buying a package, but the back office shows it as 4 products, which i'd expect you can then part ship.

[leehack]

You could even have the 4 tickboxes showing, have them already selected and use that to illustrate what is in the package. Customer could untick then though, so be careful on the pricing if you go that route.